5 Things You Don't Want To Know About Sex

Forget taking cold showers. If you need to cool down your libido in a hurry, check out this list of 5 things you don't want to know about sex. It's pretty much guaranteed to throw anyone's sex drive in reverse. See how many you can get through before reaching for the brain bleach.

1. The STI Barricade

Grooming makes genitals more pleasing to the eyes - and more welcoming to STI's, according to a study published last year. Researchers discovered that people who shaved just once in their life were almost twice as likely to have contracted a sexually transmitted infection in the past. And people who shaved more than once a month were about four times more likely to have had an infection.

"We were surprised at how big the effect was," Dr. Benjamin Breyer - a University of California urologist who led the study - told NPR. "Right now, we have no way knowing if grooming causes the increase in risk for infections. All we can say is that they're correlated. But I probably would avoid an aggressive shave right before having sex."

So you might say pubic hair is basically a curly barricade between you and syphilis, HPV, herpes and other unsexy infections.

2. Frisky Bacteria

Sexually transmitted diseases are only a fraction of the microbes that can get passed back and forth during sex. The human mouth alone is home to approximately 6 billion bacteria at any given time. That's almost as many people as there are on earth. And those microbial worlds collide with every kiss.

Worse yet, those 6 billion are only a small sample of the microbes that come into contact with each other when we're between the sheets. So remember: no matter how many people are involved, sex is always an orgy for bacteria - and we're the mattress.

3. Spring Breaker Seniors

If you need a last-minute gift for your mom or dad, consider getting them a gift basket stuffed with prophylactics. Sexually transmitted infections have been spreading rampantly among Americans 65 or older over the last 10 years. Incidence of syphilis is up 52 percent while chlamydia is up 32 percent since 2007. And researchers aren't exactly sure why.

It might be that baby boomers have started reverting to the more permissive sexual mores of the 60s since retiring. Or it might be that seniors are more sexually active (thanks to medications like Viagra, Addyi, etc.) than ever before, and they're more reckless than other demographics because they don't have to worry about getting pregnant. Or it could that today's seniors weren't given adequate sex ed back in their day.

The only thing that's certain is that STI rates are particularly high in areas where seniors live close together. So you should sit your mom or dad down and have 'the talk' before sending them off to the retirement home to live out their autumn years on permanent spring break.

4. Crowded House

It only takes one sperm and one egg to make a baby, but the penis has a backup plan in case the first one doesn't work out. Actually, it has anywhere from 50 million to 1.2 billion backup plans in any given orgasm. That's roughly how many swimmers are racing for the egg every time a man ejaculates.

Based on those numbers, one guy theoretically produces more than enough sperm each month to impregnate every woman in the world. And they're all jam-packed into about a teaspoon of fluid. So keep that in mind the next time you feel crowded on the bus.

5. Spit Take

That teaspoon might not sound like much, but it adds up over time. There's no standard number of orgasms that guys have to have per year. But researchers suggest that guys should ejaculate at least 21 times a month to avoid prostate cancer. And if you add that up over 365 days, you get 42 ounces of semen. Which is about the same volume as the Super Big Gulp from 7-Eleven.

If only former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg included that stat in his Big Gulp ban....